Alzheimer's disease (AD) causes progressive dementia with consequent formation of amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, gliosis and neuronal loss. The disease occurs in both genetic and sporadic forms whose clinical course and pathological features are quite similar. Three genes have been discovered to date which, when mutated, cause an autosomal dominant form of Alzheimer's disease. These encode the amyloid protein precursor (APP) and two related proteins, presenilin-1 (PS1) and presenilin-2 (PS2), which, as their names suggest, are structurally and functionally related. Mutations in any of the three proteins have been observed to enhance proteolytic processing of APP via an intracellular pathway that produces amyloid beta peptide (Aβ peptide, or sometimes here as Abeta), a 40-42 amino acid long peptide that is the primary component of amyloid plaque in AD.
Dysregulation of intracellular pathways for proteolytic processing may be central to the pathophysiology of AD. In the case of plaque formation, mutations in APP, PS1 or PS2 consistently alter the proteolytic processing of APP so as to enhance formation of Aβ 1-42, a form of the Aβ peptide which seems to be particularly amyloidogenic, and thus very important in AD. Different forms of APP range in size from 695-770 amino acids, localize to the cell surface, and have a single C-terminal transmembrane domain. Examples of specific isotypes of APP which are currently known to exist in humans are the 695-amino acid polypeptide described by Kang et. al. (1987), Nature 325: 733-736 which is designated as the “normal” APP; the 751 amino acid polypeptide described by Ponte et al. (1988), Nature 331: 525-527 (1988) and Tanzi et al. (1988), Nature 331: 528-530; and the 770 amino acid polypeptide described by Kitaguchi et. al. (1988), Nature 331: 530-532. The Abeta peptide is derived from a region of APP adjacent to and containing a portion of the transmembrane domain. Normally, processing of APP at the α-secretase site cleaves the midregion of the Aβ sequence adjacent to the membrane and releases the soluble, extracellular domain of APP from the cell surface. This α-secretase APP processing creates soluble APP-α, which is normal and not thought to contribute to AD. Pathological processing of APP at the β- and γ-secretase sites, which are located N-terminal and C-terminal to the α-secretase site, respectively, produces a very different result than processing at the α site. Sequential processing at the β- and γ-secretase sites releases the Aβ peptide, a peptide possibly very important in AD pathogenesis. Processing at the β- and γ-secretase sites can occur in both the endoplasmic reticulum (in neurons) and in the endosomal/lysosomal pathway after reinternalization of cell surface APP (in all cells). Despite intense efforts, for 10 years or more, to identify the enzymes responsible for processing APP at the β and γ sites, to produce the Aβ peptide, those proteases remained unknown until this disclosure.